Portuguese Custard Tarts
| Serves: 12 people | Recipe course: Desserts | Total time (min.): 125 |
Ingredients
For the pastry:
200g plain flour (plus extra for dusting)
1tbsp caster sugar
110ml cold water
100g unsalted butter, chilled
For the custard filling:
250g caster sugar
250ml water
1 cinnamon stick
Lemon rind from ½ a lemon
25g plain Flour
12g cornflour
300ml whole milk
4 egg yolks
1 whole egg
1 vanilla pod
Method
1 - Grease the muffin tin with melted butter.
2 - Add 200g of plain flour and 1 tbsp of caster sugar to your Kenwood Chef bowl fitted with the K-beater. Start on speed 1 whilst gradually adding the cold water.
3 - Once mixed in, increase the speed to 2 and mix for 1 minute, if the mixture is too dry to form a dough carefully add a tiny amount of water and mix again- the dough should be firm but not sticky.
4 - Wrap the dough and chill for 20 minutes.
5 - Fit the food processor attachment to the high-speed outlet with the coarse grating plate and grate the unsalted butter.
6 - Remove the dough from the fridge, transfer to a lightly floured surface. Roll it into a rectangle approximately 30 x 40cm.
7 - Sprinkle half of the grated butter over the surface of the dough.
8 - With the shorter edge facing you, fold the top third toward you and the bottom third up over it.
9 - Turn the dough 90 degrees, roll out to the same size again, add the remaining grated butter.
10 - With the shorter edge facing you, fold the top third toward you and the bottom third up over it.
11 - Wrap and chill for 30 minutes.
12 - Repeat the rolling out and folding process twice more. Wrap and chill for another 30 minutes.
13 - Meanwhile, add the caster sugar, water, cinnamon and lemon rind into a medium saucepan. Place over a high heat, bring to the boil and then reduce to a simmer for 3 minutes.
14 - Carefully transfer the syrup to a jug, set aside to chill completely in the fridge, leave the cinnamon and lemon peel to infuse in the syrup.
15 - Preheat the oven to 230°C.
16 - Remove the pastry from the fridge and roll out to a thickness of 5mm. Using a pastry cutter, cut out 12 circles big enough to fill the sides of the muffin tin.
17 - Line the tin with the pastry. Return the pastry cases to the fridge whilst you make the filling.
18 - Combine the plain flour and cornflour in a small mixing bowl and add 80ml of milk, stirring until completely smooth.
19 - Add the remaining 220ml of milk to a large saucepan, bring to the boil stirring regularly.
20 - Once boiling remove from the heat, add the contents of the saucepan to the mixer bowl fitted with the whisk.
21 - Whisk on speed 3 and whilst whisking, pour in the contents of the small mixing bowl.
22 - Increase the speed to 6 and whisk for 30 seconds, or until fully combined.
23 - Halve the vanilla pod, scrape with a knife to remove the seeds.
24 - In a medium bowl, add the eggs, eggs yolk and the seeds from the vanilla pod and beat with a fork to combine.
25 - Remove the cinnamon stick and lemon rind from the chilled sugar syrup.
26 - Start the machine on speed 3, whilst whisking add the syrup into the milk mixture, continue whisking whilst you add the contents of the medium bowl, whisk for a further 20 seconds on speed 6.
27 - Pour the custard mixture into the pastry cases, filling each one almost to the top.
28 - Bake for 20-25 minutes or until the custard looks puffed up and scorched on top and the pastry is golden brown.
29 - Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the tin, take care they will be extremely hot.